Heidegger drew a hard line between ontic sciences and ontological philosophy

Evidence

I myself, then, will be the path. But Heidegger re-emphasises that this does not mean I should sign up for courses in human sciences such as biology, anthropology, psychology or sociology. These merely ‘ontical’ inquiries have nothing to contribute to an ontological investigation. Like the speculative debris cleared away by Husserl’s epoché, they are likely only to get in the way by clogging up our inquiry with irrelevant ideas. If I want to know what a human being is, it’s no good wiring one up to a EEG machine to measure brain waves, or analysing examples of behaviour. Just as Karl Jaspers had turned from psychology to phenomenology in order to practise ‘a different thinking’, Heidegger felt that the question of Being must be truly philosophical or it is nothing. Moreover, it should not be philosophical in the old-fashioned way, focused narrowly on questions of what we can know. A new new beginning is needed. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 199

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘ontical’ empirical inquiries from ‘ontological’ philosophical investigation, a core Heideggerian distinction for this chapter’s orientation purpose.
• XREF: Connects to the ontic/ontological distinction that recurs in existential thought and later in Sartre and Merleau-Ponty debates. — connects to: Heidegger’s ontological difference separates beings from Being itself — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 197